So April 17th, we camped the prevous night and had packed up and were on our way across the car park when a guy stuck his head out of his car and asked what we were doing. We told him that we were doing the 88 temple pilgrimage,and were hoping to hitch hike to the next temple. Before we could say Bob's your uncle he had offered to give us a lift. Needless to say we didn't need to think twice about. The guy, Manabu, turned out to be a truck driver, with no English. Before we went anywhere,he showed us his place of work and had to drop a couple of things off. However, before long we arrived at our first temple of the day,Enko ji(no.39), our first in Ehime prefecture. We were finally on the 3rd leg of the journey but not quite halfway yet. We did wonder if we would reach half way that day.
Manabu, our driver for the morning,didn't come across a wrong turn that he didn't like and was totally inept at taking directions.Almost as inept as following them,even when given by a fellow Japanese person. Needless to say, I was tearing my hair out and desperate to put my Japanese drivers licence to good use. But he was doing us a favour on his day off, so I should have been more gracious.In this fashion we reached Kanjizai ji (no.40) and Ryuko ji (no.41),where Manabu left us.